The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to sorting electronic messages. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for sorting incoming electronic messages using attributes associated with the sender, the sender address, and/or other characteristics of the electronic message.
Background and Relevant Art
Today, businesses and individuals are communicating using electronic messages such as mails, instant messages and voice messages. Communicating in this manner is convenient because the electronic messages are delivered relatively quickly to the recipient. Electronic messages enable individuals and businesses to carry on conversations, transact business, etc., at minimal cost. The ease by which a person is able to send and receive electronic messages thus makes this form of communication extremely attractive.
As a person or business begins to send and receive electronic messages, it quickly becomes clear that the electronic messages need to be sorted. The need to sort electronic messages, which often applies to both the electronic messages that are sent as well as to the electronic messages that are received, arises for a variety of reasons. First, many users have many different correspondents and these users can potentially receive hundreds of electronic messages over a short period of time. If a particular user is away from his or her computer for an extended period of time, sorting through unread messages can become a time consuming task. In fact, a user that does not check his or her email for a week or even a day is often faced with this problem. Thus, many users spend significant time sorting through the electronic messages that they have received.
The need to sort electronic messages is further complicated by unsolicited electronic messages. Unsolicited electronic messages typically include commercial advertisements and political messaging, but may also include offensive solicitations such as pornographic solicitations. Generally, users deal with both solicited and unsolicited messages on a daily basis. While many users tolerate sorting through solicited electronic messages, sorting through unsolicited electronic messages can be annoying and is a waste of valuable time.
Today, electronic messaging programs provide some sorting capabilities. Many of these methods, however, are dependent on actions of the user with respect to the electronic messaging program. The use of filter words, for example, to automate the process of sorting the electronic messages, is primarily applied to unsolicited electronic messages. In this case, a user enters certain words into a filtering system. When an electronic message having those certain words in the subject line or body of the message is received, the message can automatically be routed to a particular folder. This method requires a recipient to manually enter all of the filter words, specify which areas of the message are to be examined (i.e. the subject line, the body, etc.) and then direct the system where to send the messages. A clear disadvantage of this method is that an electronic message can be easily placed in the wrong folder when an electronic message unexpectedly contains a filter term. When an electronic message is sent to the wrong folder, for example, the electronic message may be inadvertently deleted or the electronic message may not be read in a timely manner.
Some users sort their electronic messages manually. One of the problems faced by users in this situation is that the users are faced with the task of sorting through all of their electronic messages in order to identify and move certain electronic messages. In addition, some users may want to have a particular electronic message in more than one folder. When the electronic messages are sorted manually, those users are required to copy and paste the electronic message into each folder. Other users set up various rules that are applied to each electronic message. These rules are not related to persistent sender/sender addresses, but are typically applied to each electronic message to determine if the rule should apply. This can be computationally expensive.
Conventional techniques for sorting incoming electronic messages are dependent on the user and can often be cumbersome and difficult to manage. Because users receive increasing numbers of solicited and unsolicited electronic messages, there is a need to manage and sort electronic messages more effectively without having to apply a set of rules to each separate electronic message.